Rose Norman

Rose Norman retired in 2010 from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), where she chaired the English Department.  She cofounded and directed the women’s studies program from 1996 to 1999. She also cofounded and directed the business and technical writing program from 1986 to 2010. Women’s history was her outside specialty in her PhD program at the University of Tennessee. She did her PhD dissertation in 1979 on autobiographies of 19th century, American women writers.

Headshot of Rose Norman

Rose Norman taught graduate and undergraduate classes at UAH in technical writing, women writers, American women writers, African-American women writers, American women’s autobiographies, and Virginia Woolf.

Since retiring from UAH, Rose Norman cofounded the Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project, interviewing lesbian feminist activists in Southern states, and publishing stories about them in six special issues of Sinister Wisdom. (Obtain a poster and boxed set at sinisterwisdom.org/oralherstorians.) She has interviewed over 100 lesbians, archiving these interviews at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.

Rose Norman has published a book about the Pagoda, a lesbian-feminist residential community and cultural center that was active in St. Augustine, Florida, from 1977 to 1999. Sinister Wisdom published The Pagoda: A Lesbian Community by the Sea in January 2024.